That is your view. The Orthodox would beg to differ. Considering that even your church considers them a true church, that might pose some problems for you.
No, that is the Apostolic understanding that WE humbly accept. Of course, “The Orthodox would beg to differ”; any schismatic “would beg to differ” just has any heretic “would beg to differ” regarding councils that are protested and rejected by them. That’s not simply a coincidence, I can assure you.
But it was acceptable. Erasmus held that view. Even some learned Cardinals like Cajetan. The Roman Catholic canon simply was not confirmed for the entire church until Trent, no matter how hard some polemicists attempt to retcon older local councils into the narrative. Unless you’re really willing to call your own Cardinals and Doctors of the Church unworthy of their titles, you’re going to have to concede that Luther’s view was within the acceptable pre-Tridentine spectrum. Anything else is historic revisionism.
I do not exactly know what you are attempting to do here. If you want to protest binding councils and conveniently choose which councils are legitimate (Ecumenical vs. Local) and which are not, based upon what Erasmus and/or Cardinal Cajetan might have alluded to, well that’s simply your affair. I provided concrete, tangible facts from legitimate councils that confirms, promulgates, and receives the canon of Sacred Scripture. Instead of using a few obscure Catholics to seemingly outwit a binding council, perhaps you should genuinely try to look at Church history through a more transparent, non-protesting perspective. There were plenty of Theologians, Fathers, and Doctors that constructively disagreed on the canon before Carthage, Rome, and Hippo; but, when the Catholic Church promulgates the canon, us lowly Catholics humbly accept what the Church binds, and looses for that matter.
Well, either Luther was such a self-contradictory fool that he didn’t know what he was even saying, or you misunderstand him. Considering that you don’t seem to understand the context of your prooftext here, I’m inclined to go with the latter. Luther was not talking about some literal canon (Lutherans don’t worship a book); he was speaking in the abstract, as Lutherans do, about ‘Word and Sacrament.’ I really encourage you to read the rest of the sermon, instead of highlights from whatever anti-Lutheran website you’re copy-and-pasting from. Luther is speaking tenderly about how God can save even those who cloud the pure gospel. He’s being ecumenical - saying that despite what he viewed as Rome’s errors, Catholics “are still preserved in a marvelous way.” You could learn a lot from that sermon.
You know, the “context” argument might work on naive and unsuspecting persons. However, it’s just an old and broken record that merely attempts to justify and excuse heretical errors, with all due respect, that followers are simply too incorrigible to admit when they’re wrong. No offense to you and your beliefs, and, as I do admire many writings of Luther as he was a literary giant; but, yes, many of his works are very, very “self-contradictory” and plain bipolar, so to speak. And, while I personally take no offense at being called a “Papist”, I find it ironic how you claim Luther as having been “ecumenical” when he explicitly referred to Catholics using that term (Papist); it would be analogous to me, for instance, referring to you as a ‘prot’, ‘fundie’, or ‘bible banger’ - how ecumenical would that be?
